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China sets 2020 target for clean air in big cities

“China aims to provide clean air in its largest cities for 80 percent of each year, or more than 9-1/2 months, by 2020, up from a figure of 76.7 percent last year, the country’s cabinet said on Monday.

Amid concern that pollution was stirring social unrest, China launched a campaign in 2014 to revitalize its tainted air, water and soil, which have been ravaged by more than three decades of breakneck industrial growth.

The clean air goal for 338 cities was laid out in a five-year development plan on ecological and environmental protection that said China would push structural reforms to cut excess capacity in polluting industries.”